The World of Middle-earth

Middle-earth

Middle-earth. The very name is iconic for the process which led to the creation of the fictional world with which it is identified. In the mid-1930s, while extending one of his imaginary mythologies, J.R.R. Tolkien scribbled the phrase "Middle Earth" on a map, setting into motion a developmental process which would ultimately help launch the science fiction and fantasy cultural revolution that has swept western civilization since the 1960s.

The name "Middle-earth" is itself a very old, archaic name for the world of Men. The ancient Germanic (and Scandinavian) peoples did not envision worlds as we do. Thanks to the power of television, the efforts of NASA and observatories around the world, and the imagination of television shows like Star Trek and movies like Star Wars, we think of planets revolving around suns -- dwelling places for microbes and strange animals and powerful, charismatic civilizations.

The universe to the ancient northern mind was a much different kind of place. Distances, though smaller by today's measurements, were vaster because of yesterday's technology. An old automobile can traverse in an hour a distance greater than most ancient peoples travelled in a day or even a week. So, to them, worlds were not balls of dirt and water floating in the sky -- worlds were places where civilizations flourished. The ancient imagination conceived of non-human civilizations and cultures, and placed those cultures in other worlds. The world of the dead was almost universally acknowledged as being underground. The world of the gods was almost universally acknowledged as being in the sky.

In Germanic myth, the world of men was separated from other worlds by a vast ocean. Those other worlds, in their turn, were surrounded by another sea. Men and gods might cross from one world to the next by various means. The rainbow represented a magical bridge between the world of men and the world of the gods. The world of men, situated between all other worlds, was the middle world -- the middle earth. The literal meaning of the name conveyed with it a huge mythology which ancient men understood intuitively because they were raised in a culture which identified everything in some way with that mythology.

For Tolkien, the task of creating a new Middle-earth -- one of his own imagination -- which would coincide with our own world required that he build a coherent mythology around that Middle-earth. Tolkien's Middle-earth had to make sense both to its inhabitants and to his (as yet unidentified) readers. To Tolkien, a philologist, a word was not simply a word. The word carried with itself a history which revealed to someone like him -- to anyone with philological acuity -- the path that word had followed to its present form.

So, Tolkien's Middle-earth had to have a reasonable meaning. That is, he realized he couldn't simply pluck the name out of thin air and give it to his world. It had to be the name for his world for a reason. Mythologically, Tolkien provided that reason by establishing Middle-earth as part of a larger world, a self-contained cosmos much like the Germanic/Nordic cosmos in which all the worlds of men and other creatures were separated by seas.

Eventually, Tolkien rationalized that he could physically separate these worlds on a scale far outreaching the Germanic myths. That is, he invoked a "sundering" of the world, in which the various regions were torn away from each other and separated by an immense void, the void of space. What remained for men was their Middle-earth. Hence, Tolkien rationalized that his fictional Middle-earth was the same as our world, bereft of those ancient, mystical places where magic dwelt and flourished, and where other creatures more powerful than men made their homes.

Philologically, the story of the sundering was far more than a mere convenience. It provided a layer of new meaning to the name. "Middle-earth" acquired a new history for itself, an imaginary history. In creating this new linguistic history, Tolkien divorced "Middle-earth" from the ancient "Middengeard/Midgaard". That is, Tolkien's "Middle-earth" is a new word because it reflects a world that is not a part of Germanic mythology.

For Tolkien, the process of invention is founded upon the invention of meaning and purpose. Words associate those meanings and purposes with specific things: events, people, places, actions. By framing his imaginary events, places, and peoples in their own actions, by motivating them with their own desires, Tolkien created a new etymological foundation for the reinvention of a small portion of the English language.

"Middle-earth" is the icon for that process of reinvention. That is to say, "Middle-earth" represents all that Tolkien reinvented linguistically because his Middle-earth developed out of a long, gradual process of story-telling. As he developed new stores, Tolkien associated new purpose and meaning with selected words. Those words became part of the lexicon of the new Middle-earth.

One example of Tolkien's reinvention is his use of the word "Ent". Originally an Old English word meaning "giant", Tolkien made it the name of a race of giant tree-men. Now, in Middle-earth, Ents are not simply giants. They are the Shepherds of the Trees, one of several races of Rational Incarnates -- beings who, having been given souls by God (Iluvatar), share in the world's dooms.

The reinvention process which Tolkien began survived him, through the work of his son, Christopher, but also through the works of artists and authors around the world. Middle-earth has been recast, reinvented, restored, molded, and shaped by a thousand hands and hearts. Today's Middle-earth little resembles the Middle-earth of the mid-1930s. In fact, the Middle-earth which Tolkien himself made famous (through his publication of The Lord of the Rings) hardly resembles the Middle-earth of that faded, ragged map. The first well-known Middle-earth was the world of The Lord of the Rings, but new Middle-earths emerged as board games and computer games and other games inspired by Tolkien's stories were produced.

And, of course, there are the Middle-earths created for radio, stage, screen, and television. They all bear some resemblance both to each other and to Tolkien's literary Middle-earths, but they each possess their own distinguishing qualities. And all of these worlds, imaginary places in our past, together make up the phenomenon which, for lack of a better name, we call "Middle-earth". This Middle-earth encompasses many stories, many events. And its name speaks to those who can hear of all the deeds and tales which led to its present, worlds-spanning state.

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